UpFront

What's happens when the Penguin-in-Chief himself issues an
oh-by-the-way e-mail to the Kernel Mailing List that takes the form
of a halfhearted (dare we say half-minded?) and clearly
tongue-in-cheek press release that just happens to be entirely
about the long-awaited version 2.4 of the Linux kernel?

A worldwide sigh of thanks, followed by traffic jams at the
ftp servers.

In a move unanimously hailed by the trade press and industry
analysts as being a sure sign of incipient brain damage, Linus
Torvalds (also known as the “father of Linux” or, more commonly,
as “mush-for-brains”) decided that enough is enough, and that
things don't get better from having the same people test it over
and over again. In short, 2.4.0 is out there.

Anxiously awaited for the last too many months, 2.4.0 brings
to the table many improvements, none of which come to mind to the
exhausted release manager right now. “It's better”, was the only
printable quote. Pressed for details, Linus bared his teeth and
hissed at reporters, most of whom suddenly remembered that they'd
rather cover “Home and Gardening” than the IT industry
anyway.

Anyway, have fun. And don't bother reporting any bugs for the
next few days. I won't care anyway.

—Linus

Context: The kernel had a bit of a Y2K problem of its own. In
January 2000, Linus said the 2.4 kernel would be out in the summer.
Then in November he said the kernel would be released in early
December. Now here it is, pretty much exactly one year, um, later.
And hey: so what?

Never attribute malice to what can be adequately explained as
pure-unfiltered-idiocy.

—Joseph E. Arruda

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

—Steven Wright

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet
engines.

—Anonymous Psychopath on Slashdot

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently
advanced.

—Don Marti (as far as we know)

Every revolution has been preceded by hard critical thinking,
the diffusion of culture, and the spread of ideas among men who are
at first unwilling to listen, men concerned with solving their
private economic and political problems.

—Antonio Gramsci.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to
find out, which is the exact opposite.

—Bertrand Russell

It is a myth that people resist change. People resist what
other people make them do, not what they themselves choose to do. .
. . That's why companies that innovate successfully year after year
seek their people's ideas, let them initiate new projects and
encourage more experiments.

—Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions, but
with the future of present decisions.

—Peter F. Drucker.

You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is
out of focus.

—Mark Twain.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and
thinking what nobody has thought.

—Albert Szent-Gyorgyi.

The Internet never retreats.

—Vint Cerf

Linux (le-nuks, lin-uks) noun. A version of the UNIX System V
Release 3.0 kernel developed for PCs with 80386 and higher
microprocessors. Developed by Linus Torvalds of Sweden (for whom it
is named).

—from Microsoft Bookshelf (spotted by Wojciech
Tatina)

The only piece of software I've never cursed is emacs. It
changes modes effortlessly. When I'm editing a Perl script it adds
the tags and checks the parens. When I edit a letter it gives me
all the carriage returns in the right place. It's one piece of
software, but it understands file extensions. emacs knows what I'm
up to. It's okay with what I do and it tries to help. I often find
Word trying to add bullet points or numbers where I don't want
them. emacs never does that to me. Of course emacs and I grew up in
the same environment, so maybe that makes sense.

—Clay Shirky

...being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house
inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every
morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe
there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone
has temporarily removed the floor under your bed.

—John R. Levine and Margaret Levine Young

To try to do something that is inherently impossible is
always a corrupting enterprise.

—Michael Oakshott

Bored people are the best consumers.

—John Taylor Gatto

You people just don't get it, do you? All Linux applications
run on Solaris, which is our implementation of Linux.